Pakistan's Ahmadi community bewildered over cemetery vandalism

Members of the Ahmadi community of Pakistan are bewildered after the attack on the tombstones of over a hundred graves in the Ahmadi cemetery on December 3.

This is not the first time the Ahmadi community in Pakistan has been left with a sense of alienation, reports The Express Tribune.

Nawaz Hashmi had to pay a price for his faith for three consecutive years: in 2010, he survived an attack at an Ahmadi place of worship in Lahore. In 2011, Hashmi, along with six other men, lost his job because he was an Ahmadi. And in 2012, his late father's grave in the Model Town graveyard was razed.

"We are conditioned to live in fear," says Hashmi.

Imran Ali, whose father's grave was also demolished, said: "The chief justice is seen to take suo motu notices of the most trivial issues, then why the silence on the desecration of our graves?"

The authorities' cold shoulder was a repetition of history: no senior politician or government official had turned up at the site of the 2010 attack on an Ahmadi place of worship in Lahore.

On the contrary, the Punjab police itself removed Quranic texts from an Ahmadi graveyard in Faislabad, which they said was to avert clashes in the face of threats from extremist organisations.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) condemned the incident of Lahore grave desecration, as did other human rights bodies.

IA Rehman, Secretary General of HRCP, said that widespread incidents of intolerance towards religious minorities and different sects of Islam suggest that Pakistan does not do justice to its membership of the Human Rights Council. (ANI)